threatening to impose trade sanctions against New Zealand. Eventually, under UN brokerage, New Zealand accepted NZ$13 million compensation and Mafart and Prieur were released to France after serving fewer than four years of their sentences.
The commander of the operation, Louis-Pierre Dillais, later acknowledged his involvement to the New Zealand state broadcaster (TVNZ); despite this confessed connection to a terrorist offence he was allowed by the US government to settle in Virginia, working as an executive for arms dealer F. N. Herstal.
In 2005, the 20th anniversary of the
Michael King,
David Robie,
Ronald Reagan
The Bush family, it has to be said, has a history of bad timing. On the morning of 9/11, George H. W. Bush was meeting with Osama bin Laden’s brother even as the jets crashed into the World Trade Center (see the Bush-Bin Laden Connection). On 30 March 1981 G. H. W. Bush’s son Neil had a dinner date planned with Scott Hinckley for the following evening.
What was odd about that? Well, on 30 March 1981 George Bush was Vice-President of the United States of America, and the President, Ronald Reagan, had just been shot by Scott Hinckley’s brother, John Hinckley Jr.
At 2.30 p.m. John Hinckley Jr stood on the sidewalk outside the Washington DC Hilton and popped off several.22 bullets at Reagan, one of which entered the President’s lung. Rushed to George Washington University Hospital, the President underwent surgery and survived. If Hinckley’s hand had been a little steadier, Reagan would have died.
Which is where the “Bushy knoll” conspiracy gets started up. With Reagan dead, George H. W. “Poppy” Bush would have been elevated to the Oval Office.
Fitting Bush into the frame for the Reagan shooting is not entirely impossible. By all accounts, Bush and Reagan hated each other’s guts. Further, Bush had the sort of connections to pull off an assassination, having served as Director of the CIA. According to some intelligence analysts, Bush worked for the CIA from the early 1960s, though Bush himself denies this. (Oddly, the former Skull & Bones boy had also been tied into the John F. Kennedy shooting by a 1963 FBI memorandum which briefed “Mr George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” on the event; Bush says the George Bush in the memo is someone else. Few agree. There’s little dispute, however, that Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend Baron De Mohrenschildt died with “Poppy” Bush’s calling card in his jacket pocket.) In a sense it doesn’t matter when Bush started his spook career, because it’s where he ended up that matters: the head desk of the whole CIA shebang. George H. W. Bush became Director of the CIA. If he couldn’t set up an assassination, who could?
Then there’s John Hinckley Jr himself. According to reports, Hinckley was on Valium and was obsessed with Sirhan Sirhan, the man allegedly hypnotically programmed to shoot Robert F. Kennedy. The natural follow-up question was: had Hinckley himself been brainwashed by an MK-ULTRA-like programme to terminate Reagan?
The widely accepted official story is that the disturbed Hinckley shot the President to get the attention of actress Jodie Foster. At Hinckley’s trial he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was confined to St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC. He is still there… conveniently, some say.
A steamroller could be driven through the Bushdunnit conspiracy by arguing that G.H.W.B., if he was planning a
All of that said, the pall of a cover-up still lingers over the assassination attempt—the sort of pall, perhaps, that comes from a government conspiring to keep information from the public… information such as the decade- long connection between the Bush and Hinckley families, information such as the fact that the Hinckley-owned Vanderbilt Energy company was warned mere hours before the shooting that it likely faced a $2 million fine from the Department of Energy for overpricing oil.
Information like the full facts.
James W. Clarke,
Rendlesham Forest
Rendlesham Forest is the British Roswell. Early in the morning of 27 December 1980, radars at RAF Watton in Norfolk picked up an “unknown” flying towards the coast. Soon afterwards, security officers at RAF Woodbridge, a two-base complex run with the USAF in Suffolk, investigated a mystery fire in the bordering Rendlesham Forest. One of the security officers, Sergeant Jim Penniston, later reported: “The air was filled with electricity and we saw an object about the size of a tank. It was triangular, moulded of black glass and had symbols on it. Suddenly it shot off faster than any aircraft I have ever observed.” When daylight came, security officers found indentations in the ground and scorchmarks on trees.
Two nights later, the object returned. Deputy Base Commander Lt.-Col. Charles Halt both taped and photographed the UFO. According to him, beams of light from the craft seemed to be aimed at the bunkers storing nuclear weapons. There were also reports of aliens dancing in beams of light. Halt’s tape and film were confiscated by visiting US defence officials. Former British Chief of Defence Staff Lord Hill-Norton has said of the Rendlesham Forest incident: “Someone is sitting on information that should be in the public domain.”
Under cross-examination, the Rendlesham Forest case collapses. Doubts were first raised when it was noted by investigators at the scene that the light from a nearby lighthouse shone through the trees of Rendlesham Forest; the timing and description of Halt’s report showed he was looking in the direction of the lighthouse at the time of his observation. Contrary to fevered reports, radiation levels at the site were not significantly high. Sceptics have suggested other mundane explanations for the Rendlesham incident: on the night of the incident a meteor broke up brightly in the skies overhead and in 1980 the US Air Force was testing a prototype of the Stealth bomber, which has a black triangular shape and a strange radar print.
Peter Brookesmith,
Rosicrucians
